Four Years of iPhone
On July 14, 2017, I got my first cell phone for my Great California Road Trip.
I think that the very first person I remember meeting who had a cell phone was my long-time scoutmaster Dwight. In addition to being my scoutmaster and the father of my friend and classmate Joe, Dwight was an attorney, and I have possibly not accurate recollection of him having a cell phone when I was in high school.
The very first person my age who I knew who had a cell phone was Kipton, who was one of the guys in my quad in my freshman dorm back in 1996, twenty-five years ago next month. Back in the days when you paid by the minute, he would use only use it after 11pm when it was free so he could call his girlfriend. Kip was supposed to my sophomore year roommate in the fraternity but ended up changing colleges to be closer to his girlfriend.
By the time I graduated from college in 2001, a substantial minority of my classmates had cell phones, but by no means all of them. Most of us living in the fraternity house still used the landlines in the rooms, each of which served 2-3 bedrooms and had the last four digits PKT(1-9).
I'm not quite sure when we reached the point where everybody had a cell phone. My sister got one while she lives in Minnesota, but whether that was while she was in grad school (2003-2005) or the couple years after I can't be sure. I think that the introduction of smart phones in 2007 drove it from "a majority of people had cell phones" to "virtually everyone had cell phones". Certainly by 2012 I could post a funny graph on Facebook that made fun of the fact that everybody who met me was fascinated my lack of a cell phone. My most successful April Fool's prank ever was borrowing my sister's phone and posting an iPhone selfie telling people to DM me their number.
Despite dire predictions that my lack of a cell phone would harm my post-divorce dating life, it never really caused any problems for me. That's probably because of my excessive planning habits. I didn't need one for navigation in most cases. Of all my solo road trips the only one where I rented a GPS was the Southwestern baseball trip, and on that I barely used it.
So why did I get a phone for my baseball trip in 2017? It was a combination of a few things:
- A recognition that for Los Angeles and San Francisco I was definitely going to need GPS.
- Having many friends in California to schedule with, several of whom were unable to provide firm dates far in advance.
- M being increasingly unhappy with me being out of touch for that many days in a row.
- The price point of a landline was similar to that of a cell phone with far less benefit.
- Generally recognizing that at some point I was just being stubborn for the sake of being stubborn.
That led to me getting my first and so far only smart phone, an iPhone 7, which I still have to this day. Outside of travel, I didn't really use it that much. I usually took it to my radio show just in case the computers I used for pre-show research were being used. I took it to baseball once our season tickets were moved to electronic format. Beyond that, it mostly stayed in the house. I didn't take it to work unless I was planning on doing some calls to contractors. I'd sometimes take it to concerts, but even then I'd lock it in the car and not take it into the venue. I recognize that I've got some internet addiction tendencies, and I tried to minimize the damage by not carrying it any more than necessary.
Ironically, with the advent of the pandemic I started using it more often, mostly inside the house. I have it near my work "desk" for use as a hot spot when the wifi blips, which it does with some frequency. When I spent 2020 biking, M insisted that I carry my phone just in case, which certainly proved its worth after my crash. I've been carrying it on our morning walks to the lake. There was my brief foray into mobile gaming, not to mention all the Spanish lessons. With Birdie sleeping in our room (where our personal laptop is), I've been using it for general browsing. In short, my total phone time has gone up substantially since the pandemic started. I hope that I can knock that usage down once the pandemic ends, but with a baby I feel like leaving the house without it will be less likely.
By holding out until 2017, I became pretty much the last person I know to get a cell phone. Even my parents got one before me. If I hadn't broken down in 2017, 2020 would have done it for sure, because my employer turned on multi-factor authentication for all of our remote access once the pandemic sent everyone home. At that point a phone became a necessity for work. Of course, many of my coworkers would have said it was already necessary, but given that I managed to travel for work on seven different occasions (New Hampshire twice, Colorado once, San Francisco once, Las Vegas twice and Orlando once) without ever having more than a loaner phone once, clearly it was not. I have sometimes wondered if there was some work networking via text message that I missed out on by not having a phone, but my career has gone pretty well so I feel like the hit from that was pretty minimal, if it existed at all. Now of course we all have work chat systems (which can be accessed via a phone, of course) so I suspect that damage is less.
I will say that prior to my getting a phone, when people learned that I didn't have one the reactions fell solidly in a few categories:
- "How can you live that way?"
- "That sounds so nice."
Those responses sum up nicely that a phone can be a useful tool or a negative impact. I definitely spend mental energy on remembering not to use it, but I sure do like the benefits. In particular, phones had long since killed email, so I feel like getting a cell phone I suddenly tied back into friend networks that I had been excluded from previously.
I think that the very first person I remember meeting who had a cell phone was my long-time scoutmaster Dwight. In addition to being my scoutmaster and the father of my friend and classmate Joe, Dwight was an attorney, and I have possibly not accurate recollection of him having a cell phone when I was in high school.
The very first person my age who I knew who had a cell phone was Kipton, who was one of the guys in my quad in my freshman dorm back in 1996, twenty-five years ago next month. Back in the days when you paid by the minute, he would use only use it after 11pm when it was free so he could call his girlfriend. Kip was supposed to my sophomore year roommate in the fraternity but ended up changing colleges to be closer to his girlfriend.
By the time I graduated from college in 2001, a substantial minority of my classmates had cell phones, but by no means all of them. Most of us living in the fraternity house still used the landlines in the rooms, each of which served 2-3 bedrooms and had the last four digits PKT(1-9).
I'm not quite sure when we reached the point where everybody had a cell phone. My sister got one while she lives in Minnesota, but whether that was while she was in grad school (2003-2005) or the couple years after I can't be sure. I think that the introduction of smart phones in 2007 drove it from "a majority of people had cell phones" to "virtually everyone had cell phones". Certainly by 2012 I could post a funny graph on Facebook that made fun of the fact that everybody who met me was fascinated my lack of a cell phone. My most successful April Fool's prank ever was borrowing my sister's phone and posting an iPhone selfie telling people to DM me their number.
Despite dire predictions that my lack of a cell phone would harm my post-divorce dating life, it never really caused any problems for me. That's probably because of my excessive planning habits. I didn't need one for navigation in most cases. Of all my solo road trips the only one where I rented a GPS was the Southwestern baseball trip, and on that I barely used it.
So why did I get a phone for my baseball trip in 2017? It was a combination of a few things:
- A recognition that for Los Angeles and San Francisco I was definitely going to need GPS.
- Having many friends in California to schedule with, several of whom were unable to provide firm dates far in advance.
- M being increasingly unhappy with me being out of touch for that many days in a row.
- The price point of a landline was similar to that of a cell phone with far less benefit.
- Generally recognizing that at some point I was just being stubborn for the sake of being stubborn.
That led to me getting my first and so far only smart phone, an iPhone 7, which I still have to this day. Outside of travel, I didn't really use it that much. I usually took it to my radio show just in case the computers I used for pre-show research were being used. I took it to baseball once our season tickets were moved to electronic format. Beyond that, it mostly stayed in the house. I didn't take it to work unless I was planning on doing some calls to contractors. I'd sometimes take it to concerts, but even then I'd lock it in the car and not take it into the venue. I recognize that I've got some internet addiction tendencies, and I tried to minimize the damage by not carrying it any more than necessary.
Ironically, with the advent of the pandemic I started using it more often, mostly inside the house. I have it near my work "desk" for use as a hot spot when the wifi blips, which it does with some frequency. When I spent 2020 biking, M insisted that I carry my phone just in case, which certainly proved its worth after my crash. I've been carrying it on our morning walks to the lake. There was my brief foray into mobile gaming, not to mention all the Spanish lessons. With Birdie sleeping in our room (where our personal laptop is), I've been using it for general browsing. In short, my total phone time has gone up substantially since the pandemic started. I hope that I can knock that usage down once the pandemic ends, but with a baby I feel like leaving the house without it will be less likely.
By holding out until 2017, I became pretty much the last person I know to get a cell phone. Even my parents got one before me. If I hadn't broken down in 2017, 2020 would have done it for sure, because my employer turned on multi-factor authentication for all of our remote access once the pandemic sent everyone home. At that point a phone became a necessity for work. Of course, many of my coworkers would have said it was already necessary, but given that I managed to travel for work on seven different occasions (New Hampshire twice, Colorado once, San Francisco once, Las Vegas twice and Orlando once) without ever having more than a loaner phone once, clearly it was not. I have sometimes wondered if there was some work networking via text message that I missed out on by not having a phone, but my career has gone pretty well so I feel like the hit from that was pretty minimal, if it existed at all. Now of course we all have work chat systems (which can be accessed via a phone, of course) so I suspect that damage is less.
I will say that prior to my getting a phone, when people learned that I didn't have one the reactions fell solidly in a few categories:
- "How can you live that way?"
- "That sounds so nice."
Those responses sum up nicely that a phone can be a useful tool or a negative impact. I definitely spend mental energy on remembering not to use it, but I sure do like the benefits. In particular, phones had long since killed email, so I feel like getting a cell phone I suddenly tied back into friend networks that I had been excluded from previously.